Hanukkah: A Celebration of Lights! (K, 8, Blue)

Our theme this week was "Hanukkah: Celebration of Lights" and we focused on the letter Kk, the number 8 and the color blue.

The beginning of December means that we compared November weather from this year and last.

 

We read this week: The Hanukkah Mice by Steven Kroll
                                Latkes and AppleSauce by Fran Manushkin
                                How Do Dinosaurs Say Happy Chanukkah? by Jane Yolen
                                Hanukkah! by Roni Schotter
                            
Our question of the week was "What is your favorite color?" We finished talking about our shapes and have started colors, so I thought it would be nice to get the conversation started about colors.

For our theme of the week, we talked all about the tradition of Hanukkah. I brought in my childhood menorah to show the kids and for us to put "candles" in for each night.

We played dreidel.

 The kids used Hanukkah cookie cutters and painted with blue, yellow and black paint.

I have Hebrew alphabet blocks that I brought in and let the kids explore with. They like looking at them and building towers with them.

Using different materials like feathers and pastas, the kids made collage menorahs. I drew with glue the shape of the menorah and the kids used the art materials on the glue. I love the way this project turns out.

We talked a lot this week about the color blue, and we sang "We Love Blue."

"We love blue, we love blue,

Yes we do, yes we do.

We love the ocean and sky so blue,

We love blue ribbons and blue jeans too.

We love blueberries, so good for you,

Yes, we love blue."

When we focus on a color I love to do "color hunts" in our classroom. Each child takes a turn to walk

around the classroom and bring back something that they found that is blue. The tricky thing is that they have to bring different things, no duplicates allowed! Here is what we found for the color blue.

I gave the kids dots of blue, white and black paint to make shades of blue.

When we worked on our number activities, we practiced writing the number and word for the number 8.

I made these worksheets that reinforces the one to one concept. The kids practice writing the number and have to color a square for each picture that they see.

We colored a picture using a "color by number key" that I got from this book.

For our letter activities, we used our handwriting sheet for the letter Kk from this book.

We also did this worksheet that helps work on letter recognition that I got from this book.

The students also wrote in their journals for the letter K.

We turned a K into an Kangaroo! This book is great.

With playing cards we tried to find the kings. Each turn children flip over a card and have to name what letter or number it was. If they turned over a king, they get to wear the crown!

We hopped like kangaroos during a dance party.


The class watched this video to watch how the kangaroos hop around. I found this cool one that like a real life "Kratt Brothers" which the kids love from PBS.

For our alphabet wall we made kites.

Here are the words we came up with this week!

My class starts to turn 5 with this birthday! Yum!

Up next week: "Candy Land", Ll, 9 and red.